After Monday’s nastiness, dragging yourself
up from such a rare and abrupt occurrence can be hard. You play the scene over
and over in your head, analysing what you should have done better, sometimes
veering to the far-fetched – how you could have run after the guy or pinned him
to the ground in a lightning manoeuvre that would even have the SAS getting out
one of their standard contracts.
But of course, life goes on. On Tuesday 13
August, we took it easy – just going to the centre for cakes and a drink. I
walked past the scene of the crime and I sat with Bonny Bee in the square
nearby while the children played in the interactive fountains listening to a
guitarist playing some popular songs. Returning to where you had an extreme
experience as early as possible is often good for the psyche: it helps in the
process of returning to normal.
On Wednesday 14 August, after having cooked
a meal of rice with secreto ibérico and vegetables, I took a look at Gonçalo’s
suggestions and decided to take everyone to the beach at Fonte do Telho. The
beach guards at Meco the other day said it was a good place to take Dainoris
with his surfboard, as the waves crashed further in the sea and they did a lot
of rolling before they hit the beach, meaning he would have quite a ride.
Firstly, though, we stopped at a café on
the main avenue out of town for a cake and coffee. A stressful affair, tension
was predominant, the children sensed there was bad air and seemed somewhat
aloof. Probably a wise attitude to adopt, as both Bonny Bee and I were fed up
with something or other, that we couldn’t put our fingers on.
I was about to change our course and head
towards one of the beaches nearer by, but Bonny Bee thought the children needed
to sleep. They had got up at seven-thirty in the morning after a very short
night’s sleep. Milda was already asking to be carried, even though we needed to
walk less than 100 metres from the car to the café and back.
The beach was a good 45 minutes away, and it was already gone 4, so by the time we arrived, it would really be prime beach time. One thing that astounded me was the number of French cars on the road, and all of them going obnoxiously faster than anything else, even the local dudes in their BMWs and Audis with their baseball caps on back-to-front.
Reaching the beach was an education:
passing a huge number of umbrella pines, then down an incline that would not be
suitable for parking, we arrived amongst a throng of people and cars. It will
never cease to amaze me how it’s possible to go to the end of the land through
swathes of empty countryside and find so much commotion, a tumult of the least
expected kind. On one of the main streets parallel to the beach there was a car
park and a clearing to the beach directly opposite.
Arriving at the beach, I could see the point the
rescuers were making: the waves were indeed quite large but they crashed further
out to sea. We dumped our stuff on the soft, powdery sand and got changed. The
waves were really playful – they kept coming in at quite a rapid frequency, but
the real breakers were further out. The undercurrents were extreme though, so swimming
was going to be a problem.
Dainoris took his surfboard. After two failed
attempts, the waves on this beach provided the winning formula to carry him to
the beach. He had a great time riding on to the sand, but he and his sisters
have an innate sense of risk, so he knew when to stop. Milda isn’t really a fan
of the sea – she doesn’t like getting wet above her belly button, so Dainoris
brought his surfboard back up and went to play with her.
Meanwhile, Livia had found an extremely energetic and slightly nutty girl of her age to hang around with. Due to the nature of the waves, they both kept drifting further along the beach, which meant that I needed to stay with her all the time, lest we completely lose sight of her. That’s one of the reasons I kind of favour smaller beaches, but hey, this was still quite fun. I decided to take some pictures of the scene, but Dainoris had other ideas… he kept filling up his bucket with water and chasing me around. It was at this point we understood that the nasty business had been purged and we had got our mojo back.
We stayed quite long – much longer than we usually do – and being on the west coast of Europe, we were now able to watch the sun setting. The cloudless skies overhead provided us with a gloriously unblemished backdrop to witness both the sun and the moon crossing above us. Just a few metres away was a beachside bar and restaurant made totally out of wood. The consensus was that we had worked up an appetite with all that beach activity.
The bar itself is a very special place
indeed, and the builders had obviously taken the position of the sun into
account when they built the place, because the steps down to the beach align
perfectly with the summer sunset, and the side terrace catches the sun during
the day but casts some decent shadows in the evening.
The menu was fine: the usual combination of deep fried yellow stuff, grilled fish and meat, pasta, rice, salads, desserts and fruit juices. The kids wanted a fruit juice to start with, and after the guy serving described their in-house juice, we all wanted one, and it was phenomenal. I can’t remember ever in my life having a fruit juice that actually had a creamy texture to it.
We ordered some sweet potato fries,
ordinary potato ones too, some alheira balls with onion chutney. Alheira in its
usual habitat is a particular type of sausage, but the restaurant’s take on it turned
it into something resembling a falafel. It had the taste and texture of one too.
Originally derived from “alho”, meaning garlic, which used to be a central
ingredient, they were created by Sephardic Jews trying to avoid being denounced
during the harsh days of the Inquisition. They thought that hanging sausages, which
were traditionally made from pork, from their smokehouses, would save them from
being betrayed. Other people were unaware they had made the sausages with other
meats, the garlic probably disguising their flavour.
Another sausage I have really come to
appreciate here in Portugal is the farinheira, a flour-based affair with a
tangy and powdery quality. They have a much more subtle taste than chouriços
(chorizos), which are often too salty to eat more than a couple.
We sat there contented with the fare in front of us, and decided to take a dessert. The sun was fast disappearing beyond the horizon, providing a spectacular backdrop to our meal. After two coffees while the kids played on the sunbeds in front of the place, we made our way to the car and drove home.
The unpleasant events of Monday were now a
distant memory; the demons had been banished. And now we enter the last quarter
of our Road Trip.
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